The Winter Road

by Adrian Selby

  “It’s pig shit, Chief. All my years there we never had anything bad from these people. Tributes have always been paid to them and they’ve saved lives in return, my own for one. Until we forge a friendship, the Almet won’t be the common ground it used to be, a neutral place where we can meet the clans, a place of peace and not blood, made so by the Oskoro and respected by all who live in those lands.”

  “Well well, Amondsen, if you could harness their drudhaic power, I’m sure our troubles in the Circle would soon be over. I won’t fault her for trying, Tobber,” said Othbutter.

  The Oskoro would not be used, but they would be in my debt from the gift I had for them, though what that could mean for us was as hard to fathom as they were.

  “Cleark Tobber,” said Othbutter, “you have spoken well in favour of your chief’s interests, as always. However, I will not leave these merchants to fend for themselves in the Circle when they are doing much to fill our coffers, not least by giving your clearks an ease of passage. We are done, masters. Amondsen, I wish your path swift and dry.” He stood to signal the gathering was ended. The high cleark bowed and walked past me without a nod or a word. We locked arms for a farewell, me and the chief, and I took Aude’s arm and led him out of the chamber into the main avenue that runs parallel to the dockside the far side of Othbutter’s court.

  “That might have gone better,” I said. “They think it’s a ruse, a way of getting one over on them and nothing more.”

  “You upset the merchants gathered there to be sure, but there’s none there that don’t already despise your success. Too proud to be part of it and all.”

  “I saw pity for an amusing child.”

  “Who, except Chalky Knossen, who’s coming with you, has even a slip of your ambition? You show them their sorry limits.” He leaned in to kiss my head as we walked.

  “Aye, perhaps. Can we walk back to the house? Might be the last bit of time we get to ourselves for a while.”

  We wound our way up through the carts and children, plant-addicted droopers and hawkers of the streets of Hillfast, edging the slums and the merchant’s store sheds. Those guarding them I knew well enough to ask after, teasing word of their masters out of habit, for I would not be back in Hillfast for a year. Then it was up through the steep cobbled lanes of the farmers’ huts onto the Crackmore path, a hill that led up to our house amid the cliffs.

  “How are you?” he said once we’d crested the hill and turned to look back over Hillfast, as we always did on this climb. I guessed he was meaning how I was since we’d argued the previous day. Knowing we might meet resistance on the road, I had tried a day brew, a dayer as we called it, something a bit less than the fightbrews I took to enhance my skills as a mercenary all those years ago. I lost control of the dayer, it being the first time since then I was putting my body back through it. My cleark Thornsen had taken our son Mosa out for the day while I tried it, but it didn’t go so well for Aude, who had stayed with me, and I had hurt him during the rise, when my body was fighting with the hard, violent thrill the dayer caused.

  “I’m excited to be getting going at last. I’ve gone over our tactics with Othbutter’s captain, Eirin, Thad as well, but I have a duty for you too, and Mosa won’t be back for a while.” I give him a wink but he didn’t return it and it stung.

  He was a slender, beautiful man, ropes of black hair swept to one side which I kept wanting to tuck behind his ear framing the sharp ridge of his cheek. Today the cheek was bruised.

  “Well, some instruction on getting our son to eat fish would be welcome. He tried bilt too, rabbit and reindeer. It didn’t go well, seems he can only eat their meat fresh,” he said.

  “I’m sure he’ll take to bilt with no other choice.” I took his hand in mine for the rest of the walk and let the breeze and the gulls fill our silence as we approached our house because I didn’t know how better to fill it.

  Near the gate was our two wagons and the packhorses. We’d got some boys from the shed up to help us. Thad, my drudha, was there too, overseeing the plant we were looking to trade or gift.

  “Teyr! Did you get Othbutter’s scribble on our scrolls?” he asked.

  “I did. We ride out tomorrow.”

  “Purses for our mercs?”

  “Yes, those and all. Sanger, Yalle and her crew, all paid retainers.” He nodded and turned back to the chests that he’d packed the jars and bottles of prepped plant in.

  “I’m going to cook us all some eggs and pitties,” said Aude. He put his hands on my shoulders then.

  “I’m sorry, bluebell,” I said, wanting to reach out and touch his cheek but not daring to try.

  “No, Teyr, you told me how it would be, that you might lose yourself. I didn’t think … well, I don’t know.”

  “I would say there’s no excuse, but it took hold of me, I couldn’t stone it. I …”

  He kissed me, the gentle crackle of his whiskers compressed to the softness of his lips. He always closed his eyes. I mostly closed mine, except that day, and when I saw his eyes open, I felt the hint of a smile in his mouth that cradled all else we felt.

  “We’ve a lot to do if we’re going to prove that dusty cinch Tobber wrong.” With that remark he gated off what we could not speak of to protect what his kiss reaffirmed. I watched as he walked away against the sun, his familiar off-kilter stride, shoulder slightly higher on the right, back straight up as a plank of wood, all from a twist in his left foot from his being born that would never right.

  I had a well of confidence when I first courted him. My asking around after him got back to Tarrigsen, who he worked for. Tarry was a merchant, had been like a father to me when I’d returned from soldiering with a fortune for savage work done for the armies of Jua and Marola. Aude had started with Tarrigsen a while after I served an apprenticeship there. Wine and fucking had lost their appeal quite quickly after I’d landed in Hillfast. I was a curiosity, a bet even, a barren woman with the strength of two men cold—by cold I mean without a brew—but a little too old, so I began to hear. I had thought, for all the years I was taking purses, that I just needed enough to pay out and sit on my arse getting soaked on good wine, stilling out on kannab and eating fine beef twice a day. And while I was doing that I knew I was only trying to chase out what was gnawing at my guts, that I couldn’t settle with the idea that all I did with my life was kill people for coin and then drink myself to death. So I had begun to use my knowledge of the world and give it the weight of my coin. I became a merchant and was developing a “concern,” as the other merchants would say, and they might have meant both senses of the word in saying it. Tarrigsen the merchant had also travelled far and wide, and when, one day, he took a seat at my side in the Mash Fist tavern down on the south quay he explained to me exactly what I was feeling, finding the heart of my thoughts so quickly I almost choked on my rum.

  “There’s the look of a seaman, Teyr, staring at a horizon while sat in a tavern. You in’t the first soldier to nurse her cup and wonder if she could go about the world killing and getting rich and be happy coming back home. But you also in’t the first to realise, now all the killing’s done, that a life smithing at the same forge for twenty year or keeping tally of an old ass’s coin don’t make a man poor in his spit and spirit.”

  “Well said, Master Tarrigsen. And you mentioning the work of a cleark is a bit of what brings you in your finery here among the deckhands, carters and soaks, I imagine.”

  He laughed, clacked my cup with his and drained it, putting it down heavy on the table to get old Geary to hear it and splash us out a couple more from a bottle kept put away for me.

  “He’s my best cleark is Aude, and you in’t the only merchant’s got his scent in their nose. Much as I love you, I won’t be fucked with by any merchant of Hillfast, whether she paid the colour or not.”

  “Well, it’s not really his letters or his tallying I’ve discovered an interest in, Tarry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Good, well, along with the merchants
I’m having to slap away, there’s also one or two women that have an eye for him as you do. I recall now I sent him over to get your scribble on the Shares. Had his boy with him I believe, Mosa.”

  It had been a week before. Aude had earnest, gentle blue eyes that I very much liked looking at and he sang rhymes to the boy on his shoulders amid our pleasantries. Mosa was playing with the piece of amber his father had on a necklace. I must have apologised for my appearance, for I’d spent the morning shifting sacks in my shed, and he’d said to that only that I looked fine.

  “You know his keep, Mosa’s mother, she …”

  “Yes Tarry, Thornsen told me a bit about it, you know how the clearks go, tight like a virgin’s cinch with each other.”

  “Ahh Thornsen, an excellent cleark, you’re lucky to have him, but yes, they spill more of our secrets than they do their own ale when they finish their day, I’ll bet,” he said. “But her dying giving birth to the lad is well known. It snuffed the drink out of him rightly. Caring for a dut’ll do that when there’s nobody else, I guess.”

  “I need a reason to see him. Can you give me one?”

  He laughed again at that. “How many men have you led into war, how many killed, and you’re after me cooking up some story so you can give him that look you women give us.” And he made to flick his hair about and look at me sort of side on.

  “Ha! Any women you didn’t have to pay for ever look at you like that, Tarry? I bet these others after him got proper long hair though, not a head like this, no axe blades giving their lips an extra curl either.”

  “There’s few got your brains and your means. We both know there’s a bit of chatter about you around the quays, more than a few merchants got their cocks in a twist because they won’t be half the trader you’ll be, and the gangers can’t put up any muscle worth a shit to take a slice of what you’ll make, you having paid the colour. You want to go courting Aude to keep you warm at night, I’ll be happy for both of you. Poach him as cleark and you won’t find a ship’ll take your interest or your cargo from Hillfast to Northspur, not while I’m breathing.”

  “I’ll never do that to you, Tarry. There’s my word.”

  “And I’ll take it. Now don’t wear him out.”

  I’ve harpooned whales, been holed up in blizzards in the Sathanti Peaks surrounded but unseen by a hundred enemies. I’ve been a castellan, I helped the great Khasgal found his own throne, wedding the most inspirational and powerful woman I’d ever met, the only other woman he loved. You would think then that I wouldn’t be short of things to talk about when I called on Aude to go riding for an afternoon. Tarrigsen had Mosa, saying he was going to get him helping make us all some supper. Tarry loved this man and his boy, that was clear.

  On that ride I learned Aude was naturally quiet. We must have done a couple of leagues before I managed to speak, saying I was a bit surprised he would agree to a ride with someone Tarrigsen was having to keep a backeye out for when it come to trade. And he rode on for a few moments, smiling to himself and just said, “But you’re beautiful.” I wasn’t expecting that of course, I know I’m not a painting, not after my life, and he’d have seen me blush if it wasn’t for the colouring over my face from the years of the skin rubs and how the fightbrews had changed it. Nazz’d wet himself, and Ruifsen, if they could have seen me shy like a young lass, having known what I was like on campaign with them when I was a few years younger.

  Aude took a keen interest in plant, more than anyone I knew that wasn’t a soldier, and we’d stop when we saw this or that, and it filled up most of what we talked of. There was a run of chestnut trees flowering, and we climbed a couple to get us a few handfuls of their teardrop leaves and some hunks of bark. He said he knew a good infusion for coughs and breathing troubles that I used to get a lot of when taking the brews, and that Mosa would get from time to time. He didn’t make a fuss either like some men had when I, having been a soldier and also a deckhand, flew up a tree faster than he did. Even asked me to lend him a hand up. I liked that he had no idea how to work up to a kiss, and it quieted him enough when I took the initiative that I realised I might have been the first he’d kissed since his keep, Mosa’s mother, had died.

  Of Mosa he couldn’t speak enough, two summers old and a handful by all accounts, having found his feet and now pulling on anything left near the edge of tables, including a bottle of ink, which, even with cleaning, left him looking like he’d soldiered and paid the colour down in Jua. They sat me next to Mosa that night after our ride out. I tried eating my stew and helping Mosa with his, but not without getting the odd spoonful in the face from his bursts of excitement or frustration. I sang a few songs I knew and pulled some faces, which got the boy laughing, and it felt nice, filled my heart up.

  Before the end of summer Aude had moved with Mosa up to my house, which pleased my kitchen girls and everyone else besides, it seems. By winter the boy called me Ma. I looked up at Aude the moment Mosa said it, for it made me tearful. He said, “That’s right, she’s Ma to you and her crew, I think. Isn’t that right, Ma?”

  He was smiling too, and much moved, I think, and he give Mosa a kiss. That was the happiest I’ve been.

  Chapter 3

  Now

  Her eyes are closed.

  My eyes are closed. I’m warm, heavy and safe.

  She must not move until the red drum beats.

  A thump, a single unignorable knock. And it’s mine, I feel it. Either my finger twitches or I try to twitch it. And between these two moments and the flutters of sinew and muscle that follow I know I am held, swaddled. A fingernail of cold air irritates the back of my throat.

  When she wakes, she must choose.

  Not swaddled. Buried.

  Reach up and leave us, or stay and begin her service.

  My lungs pull and nothing happens. I spasm; warm wet earth binds me, holds shut my eyes. I pull again. A gurgle, something slithering into my throat from my nose, earth filling in behind it. I try to cough and force this fluid, this jelly, out of a channel—no, a pipe jammed solid in the side of my mouth. I’m shaking, convulsing in this bed, I drive my arms up, fingers wriggling, shoulders, chest; head straining to be upright. The weight on my arms falls away; they’re freed, and with the realisation that I am close to the surface I pull up my knees and kick myself by inches out of my grave, twisting onto my side to retch up and out this reed in my mouth and the thick cold slime that floods from my nose. I clutch my throat, maddened and terrified of the great weight pressing against my chest still. Then I realise what was missing by its return: my heart beating, now a demented pounding that has remembered its duty. I sneeze and cough up more of the slime, wheezing, breathing too fast, shallow gulps crackling, and I’m coughing out this green fluid streaked black with blood. Before I can open my eyes I’m gone again, my galloping heart an agony.

  Fucking Oskoro.

  The air’s more blue, I shiver and start awake. I try to open my eyes. My left eye, less swollen now, sees along my arm, sees vomit and whatever mix it was the Oskoro put inside me to stop me breathing. My right eye won’t open, I can’t move it, the one that the edge of the arrow caught. I reach up and there’s a press on it, a thick hard skin of wax spread over my face, a mask. It feels like I’ve got sand in my head, my nose full of the wax’s smell, honey and sour milk.

  The wind has picked up, licking about two big rocks at each of my shoulders. The river is yards away. I want its cold to kill me.

  “Your debt’s paid. Fuck off.” My throat and mouth are dry and raw, the words fall out of me like wood shavings.

  The wind’s saying I’m naked. The river’s ready to give me my wish. Grebes and woodpeckers call undisturbed, so I’m alone.

  I could lie here, cover the earth back over me like bed furs, curl up like a girl again, wake in the dark as my ma leaned in through our curtain. She’d say to me, my ma, “Up then, your pitties ain’t marching themselves to the pan.” Candle in her hand, red wool hat, a gift from Sukie Auksen, who loved
her before my da won her with his songs and his hips. Thruun, my little brother, was cutched into me, thumb loose in his mouth and sleeping like the dead, for even stone will stir from time to time.

  Give us a hand up then, Ma, if I’m to go on living.

  The rock at my right takes her place and I pull myself up. I blink her candle away and squat to piss. I feel a poultice crack as I do, on my back, and look down at where the spear had come through me. I can feel something like a thread of yarn moving between the mash over the holes in my back and belly and I know it was Oskoro drudhanry, for they had plants with roots that could find a grip in the ropes of gut and the muscle and bones and blood of bodies, knit themselves into a feast of veins and drink their due.

  It takes me a moment more of feeling around the wounds to realise I’m using my left arm. I move it carefully, for the arrow wound’s been done above my left bab too and it wouldn’t do to break the mash up early. I say early but I’ve got no idea how long I’ve been buried.

  I hobble forward into the river, unsteady as the stabbing pins of waking muscles scritch with each step.

  This is a river running clear, pebbles and boulders its bed, blurred by its force. It makes me gasp and cuss as I go in. I plunge under and the current strips me raw. If I open my mouth and fall back I can end it. I won’t get up. My bones would settle into the ground and my blood would find his blood, for we died far from our bloodlands and would be free. Their gates are locked.

  My heart is beating too hard though, which is its own answer. The river runs through me, a heavy embracing rushing force inside and out of me, calling me to act, to follow its example.

  I leave the river as the sun sets, clean, but I won’t survive the night without clothes or a fire. As I look down at the shallow pit the Oskoro put me in to heal, I see a ribbon of leather I had not noticed, running between it and a mound of earth a few feet away. I kneel at this mound, the ribbon disappearing into it. I dig aside the dirt and pull at the leather. A sack is buried, with a bow and quiver of arrows. It had all likely belonged to the herders.